Stretch Dungeon Game Review: Fall In, Cop Out

Like many other games before it, Nitrome’s Stretch Dungeon is a unique yet uncannily familiar endless faller game.

What makes this game so different from all the other endless faller game is the fact that the very thing that makes it utterly unique is also the same thing that makes the game feel so strangely familiar.

It’s complicated like that.

In this game, the protagonist is a pixel character, who also happens to be a prisoner.

At the start of the game, the prodigy pixelated character is seen being squeezed out of a prison cage that seems to stand right on top of an endless, pointless, randomly generated pit.

While most games of the endless faller kind are usually played by controlling the protagonist, Stretch Dungeon is peculiarly distinct in such a way that in this game, things actually work the opposite way.

Instead of players having to control their characters, this game is all about having the players control the surroundings of their prodigy pixelated character.

In Stretch Dungeon, players will have to control the walls of the dungeon in order to keep the protagonist safe.

Tapping the screen will actually cause parts of the level to bulge out — consequently knocking the pixelated protagonist either towards gems or away from danger, depending on where the player intends the bearded runaway prisoner to end up in.

Things will not be as easy as they might first seem in this game, however.

The place is filled with mashing barriers, spikes and other dangerous things.

Users will often find bounce pads that could either hurl them into the place where they intend to go, or push them onto a wall of spikes — and it will be the last thing that they’ll know.

Another interesting thing about this game is that stretching walls doesn’t always make things end up the way players would want them to. Sometimes, some obstacles move around as the players stretch the walls, and this could sometimes be either a problem or an advantage.

Overall, Stretch Dungeon is interesting enough to keep gamers playing for a long time to come.

How long that time will be exactly — depends entirely on how the developers intend to keep the game’s flames fuming.